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Masters was educated at Wellington and Sandhurst, the son of a Lieutenant-Colonel whose family had a long tradition of service in the British Army in India. He joined the army in 1933 and was posted to a Gurkha regiment. He saw service in the north-west Frontier and was rapidly promoted. At the outbreak of World War II his regiment was sent to North Africa and he served in the desert and in Iran and Iraq in the capacity as Adjutant. Later in the war Masters was sent to Staff College at Quetta. Here he met the wife of a fellow officer and began an affair. They were later to marry, this was cause for a small scandal at the time. After Staff College he joined a Chindit battalion and served behind the JapaneseJapan (, Nippon/Nihon literally "the origin of the sun") is a country in East Asia situated on a chain of islands east of the Asian continent on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. The largest of these islands are, from north to south, Hokkaido , Honsh lines in Burma. His brigade (the 111 brigade) was ordered by general LentaigneMajor General Walter David Alexander Lentaigne (1899-1955) British Indian Army As a Brigadier he replaced Major General Charles Wingate as commander of the Chindits when Windgate was kill in an air crash. 1899 Born 1918 Joined 4 Gurkha Rifles 1918 1919 Af to hold a position code-named ‘Blackpool’. The position was attacked with great intensity for seventeen days, eventually the brigade was forced to withdraw. These events Masters later wrote about in his autobiographical The Road Past Mandalay. He also described how he gave the order to shoot 19 of his own men, casualties who had no hope of recovery or rescue.
At the end of the war Masters left the army and attempted to set up a business promoting walking tours in the Himalayas, one of his hobbies. The business was not a success and to make ends meet he decided to write of his experiences in the army. His novels proved popular and he became a full time writer and moved to the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in.
Apart from the autobiographical works (mentioned above) Masters is also known for his historical novelA historical novel is a novel in which the story is set among historical events or, more generally, where the time the action takes place in predates the time of the first publication. It is a genre popularized in the 19th century by artists classified ass set in India. The best known of these is Bhowani Junction which concerns the Partition of IndiaThe Partition of India was the division of the Indian subcontinent that occurred following World War II. Very shortly after being awarded of dominion status by the British Empire (independence), on August 15, 1947, the colony of British India was divided and the Anglo-Indian community. It was made into a film. Its main character is called Savage and Masters was to use the surname again in a series of novels in an attempt to trace the entire history of the British in India through one family. Unsurprisingly, considering the subject, his works are not without their critics, many of whom think his work to be revisionist or non-critical of the Empire. He has even been described as an apologist for the Empire. The critic Ronald Brydon has stated 'For [me], the saga of the Savages, heroes and conquistadors of the Raj, was a political pornography in which [I] savoured the illicit sensualities of imperialism.' Others have detected a greater sophistication in his dealings with the British Empire than simple revisionism. Another recurrent theme in his work is Rock climbing. In the fifties and sixties his books sold in large numbers, particularly Bhowani Junction now most, if not all, of his works are out of print.